Credit: Creative Commons

Good Cogs and Their Tools

Is it progress—or just motion?

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Alexandre Papin over 2 years ago

Oh man oh man. I felt that rant.

I think the worst of it all is how easy it is to get set in the coggy set of mind. Slowly lulled in a rut. Then it gets post-hoc rationalized - people will think that it's part of doing business and growing an org. That there is an inescapable reversal to the mean for any once glorious thing. And same for a product, not cared for enough your thin vision gets diluted until anything that's left is some lukewarm compromise that nobody likes. That's "crossing the chasm", "catering for new markets", or something to that effect.
That dropping of standards, the seemingly irreversible loss of a spirit, depresses me quite a bit. I'm allergic to wasted potential, efforts, and ideas; they make me mad more than anything. I remember being sad as a kid thinking about toys nobody cared about and how many people helped make them. I'm still there often.

There is another Cutler idea that I keep thinking about, people with both "sensibility to incoherence" and "willingness to fix it". I think like that too, in any org you'll always have people fight for better, more thoughtful work over the noise passing for the signal. People with the right level of agency. Just need to get enough of them around in the right position with the right support for magic.

I think it's why I'm addicted to startups, and small ones at that. You get to demonstrate that there is a better way and show undeniable results. With the added panache of beating orgs 100x the size and full of cogs. It's the positive affirmative way of being fed up with it. It doesn't get enough credit compared to the business model or tech innovations.

Thanks for the words Brie, very communicative enthusiasm as always.

@Sebastian H over 2 years ago

Love that article.
First thing which came to my mind: Less writing and scheduling, more phoning and talking. Working in sales I learned that most of the issues/questions which often end up in our pipeline/slack channels etc. could have been solved with one easy phone call instead of another task or follow up message in any tool.